She was utterly ignorant of its character or its occupants.
It might be the den of a band of thieves—the haunt of a gang of murderers—and she was alone, alone with a man who evidently hated her with the vengeful hate of a wicked and vindictive soul.
Yet even in this terrible emergency, her courage did not forsake her.
Her high and noble spirit rebounded after the shock which had, for one brief moment, depressed it.
She looked at Augustus Horton, gazing upon him with such a glance of mingled horror and loathing, that the meanest hound would have shrunk from the contemptuous expression of her superb countenance.
"I thought you a villain," she said, with cold deliberation, unmixed with terror; "but I did not think you were capable of such a deed as this. There were depths of black infamy which I had yet to fathom. I thank you for teaching me their black extent."
"You shall thank me for a better lesson ere we part, Camillia Moraquitos."
Again the Spanish girl looked at him with the same cold and withering gaze.
"I do not fear you," she murmured between her clinched teeth; "I can suffer—but I can also die!"
Her small white hand wandered almost mechanically to the bosom of her silken dress, where, concealed by the rich folds of black lace, lurked the jeweled hilt of a small dagger.